Roy Moore’s Opponent Just Did The DUMBEST Thing Possible

Picture this: you’re running for the United States Senate in a state where your party is at a severe disadvantage. You have a radical position on a major issue that is quite literally the only thing driving some voters to support your opponent. But in the closing months of the campaign, a miracle happens: stories begin to trickle out accusing your opponent of truly heinous acts against teenagers. Many on your opponent’s own side have disavowed him, but thanks to doubts about the stories and your aforementioned radicalism, the race is still competitive.

So what do you do?

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If you’re Alabama Democrat Doug Jones, you commit an astonishing unforced error less than a week before election day.

It seems some idiot came up with, and other idiots approved, the following idea to seize upon the predation allegations against Republican Roy Moore:

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https://twitter.com/williamcson/status/938592106129559554

Yes, that’s a campaign mailing asking how voters would react “if a black man went after high school girls.” Yes, the Jones campaign admitted it’s theirs.

But Jones’ ad throws Black people under the bus. As Michael Harriot explains for the Root, the committee’s flyer relies on an “oversimplifciation of the black mind as only caring about black issues.”

“Part of the reason the Democratic Party has been marginalized as a party that only exists on the coasts and in urban areas is whitemannery like this,” he explains. “The Democratic Party is trash. It is the reason Hillary Clinton lost. It is the reason Donald Trump is president” […]

Black voters play a major role in the Democrats’ future. They essentially voted President Obama into office during both 2008 and 2012. The party can’t afford to alienate Black constituents, especially in this election.

Harriot’s Root piece she quotes is worth reading more from (aside from its lies about Donald Trump and conservative policies, of course), for its absolutely brutal assessment of Democrats and race:

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For the party leadership, black people aren’t whole people who have the same concerns about taxes, job creation, education initiatives, international policy and economics as other voters. They are simply bodies collected in the coffers of the party’s ineffective longing for power.

Now that Dems think Doug Jones has a decent chance to pick up a Senate seat, they have turned to Alabama’s black electorate as if they were in the state the entire time. Furthermore, the only argument they have made in their efforts to convince black voters to vote for Jones is that one thing he did for black people that one time. Every solicitation is the same: “Remember when he convicted the racists who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church? See? He’s down!”

[…] Democrats treat blacks in the South like stepchildren from a previous marriage: They’ll have us over for weekends and election holidays, smile and act nice, but they don’t really do shit for us. They treat the new kids better. The white ones.

Ouch.

The ad backfires either way you look at it: either it’s appealing to a stereotype about black men being sex predators, or it’s insinuating that Alabama voters — y’know, the people Jones is trying to persuade to support him — are the sort of people who buy the stereotype and would be rejecting Moore if only his skin color was different.